‘There’s always winners and losers’: traditional masculinity, resource dependence and post-disaster environmental complacency

Abstract

The 2013 Southern Alberta flood was a costly and devastating event. The literature suggests that such disasters have the potential to spur greater environmentalism and environmental action, as residents make connections between global environmental change and local events. However, the literature also suggests that residents in communities dependent on fossil fuel extraction might see technological disasters, like oil spills, as threats to their economic well-being, thereby limiting environmental reflexivity. Given that Alberta is home of the tar sands, how might a flood disaster affect men's environmental views, given both traditional notions of masculinity and men's economic dependence on oil production? Using a survey of 407 flood-affected residents of Calgary and in-depth qualitative interviews with 20 men directly impacted by the flood, this article demonstrates men's decreased tendency to change their environmental views after the flood. The qualitative data reveal that men justify this reluctance by shifting blame for climate change to the Global South, by arguing for the economic centrality of the tar sands for Alberta, and by discussing how a warming climate will largely be a positive outcome for Alberta. The article concludes with discussion of relevance for environmental sociology and for public policy.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Geographic and Social Predictors of Flood Risk Awareness

“…For a more in-depth description of data and methods, see also Haney (2018aHaney ( , 2018b and Milnes and Haney (2017). Table I includes the descriptive statistics and metrics for all the variables used in the models.…”

“…The literature reveals that several demographic factors are robust predictors of risk perception, including income (Babcicky & Seebauer, 2017;Cutler, 2016), gender (Enarson & Scanlon, 1999;Henwood, Pidgeon, & Parkhill, 2014;Milnes & Haney, 2017;Morioka, 2014), race and ethnicity (Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, 2007), occupation (Kouabenan, 2002), age (Kellens, Zaalberg, Neutens, Vanneuville, & De Maeyer, 2011;Tuohy & Stephens, 2012), ability/disability (Alexander, Gaillard, & Wisner, 2012), educational attainment, and access to information (Park & Vedlitz, 2013). It is of note that age is a significant factor regarding how people wish to receive warnings and risk-related information, with younger people preferring newer forms of media (i.e., social media) and older people preferring traditional forms of media (i.e., television) (Feldman et al, 2016).…”

Flooding and the ‘new normal’: what is the role of gender in experiences of post‐disaster ontological security?

“…Connell (1995, p. 178) asserts that men's views and practices exhibit an observable durability, or, in other words, 'among men there is a clear resistance to change'. Milnes and Haney (2017) tested this durability, studying the flood-affected residents of a large Canadian city. They determined that women were twice as likely as men to report post-flood changes in their environmental views.…”

Sociological responses to the bushfire and climate crises

“…They also show that competing explanations for any one event may serve to consolidate existing differences in belief rather than bridge them (Houser, Stuart, and Carolan 2017). While exposure to climate extremes might strengthen some peoples' conviction to act, others find ways to accommodate their experiences, however traumatic, within existing belief systems (Milnes and Haney 2017). Bergstrand and Mayer's (2017) finding that the emotional impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the strongest predictor of subsequent political, behavioural or attitudinal change among those affected adds an interesting note here.…”

“…A number of studies published in Environmental Sociology show that the influence of exposure to extreme climate events on climate beliefs is moderated by the same variables associated more broadly with environmental beliefs and attitudesvariables such as political affiliation, occupation and gender (Cutler 2015(Cutler , 2016Cutler et al 2019;Milnes and Haney 2017). They also show that competing explanations for any one event may serve to consolidate existing differences in belief rather than bridge them (Houser, Stuart, and Carolan 2017).…”